Outside a Manhattan rehearsal studio, Francis Jue is seated on the floor, alone, script in hand. The actor who's playing the character DHH — David Henry Hwang — is going over new lines for "Soft Power," and soon a sea of Asian American faces surrounds him in the hallway as cast members spill out of rehearsal for their break.
"I can't tell you how proud I am, after a year and a half of development of 'Soft Power,' finally to be getting to the point where people get to see these Asian American performers onstage," he later says of the production, which opens May 16 in Los Angeles. "It's something I never saw when I was young."